What better way to spend a warm Saturday afternoon than at a rural village fête? Kids, rides, local cakes, honey and chutney. Kiddie rides and -- always a fixture in the English countryside -- a beer tent.
Lots of rummage for sale. Bruce came away empty-handed, but Ellie scored brilliantly, trading a fiver for a great pair of bird-watching glasses.
The local brass band livened things up for pensioners sipping tea in the back garden of the village hall.
At the center of the Green stands Holy Trinity, our parish church, a fine example of the late Victorians. Ellie sings in the choir, and we have great friends here.
We have six bells in the tower, and love to listen to their tones floating over the green on Sunday mornings, and on practice night in the middle of the week. Bell Captain Peter Rose and his team gave us a fine demonstration peal.
There's a tablet in the bell tower that marks the peal that was rung at Queen Victoria's passing: hours and hours of choreographed sound.
And with local craft studios open for public viewing and sales, we discovered a hidden local treasure. Not a quarter mile from us is a nice house set back on the edge of the village. An amazing secret garden opens down to a pond, and out to the country.
Several potters were exhibiting in the gardens; I bought some lovely stoneware plates, and admired some great outdoor garden sculpture.
Open Farm Sunday was a lovely day to go visit our friends Bryan and Alison, who run Kensham Farms in nearby Cadmore End. For over fifty years they've changed and grown with agriculture, starting from their now lovely home, which had started life as a 15th century farm cottage.
Their agriculture nowadays focuses on growing high-quality wheat for baking: acres and acres of owned and leased wheat and other cereals. They have a riding stable, and host numerous micro-businesses and crafts in their farm buildings.
Our neighbors Arthur and Tony are life-long locals who came along to inspect the drying sheds and machinery. Arthur was born in a cottage down the row, and works in what is left of High Wycombe's furniture manufacturing business. Tony grows the neatest patches of runner beans, root crops, and brussel sprouts you've ever seen, out behind our cottage in the "allotment."
Ellie thought she'd check out Bryan's latest investment, a John Deer Combine --
- 565 horsepower engine
- 1200 litre fule tank (lasts a day)
- Can carry 9 tonnes of wheat in grain tank
- GPS automatic handsfree steering
- Self-leveling on hillsides
- Yield meter & mapping moistrue meter
- Can harvest 120 acres per day
- 9.15 meter cutter bar
- Cost: £197,000 including 30% discount (That's British pounds, equivalent to about 292,000 in today's dollars
Here's Bryan; Alison was in the barn, seeing tea and cakes. Their son Charlie is the farm manager, and has Nigel and Paul on full-time, plus seasonal. Old Nigel drives the big combine; when he started in these fields, he was a teenager wielding a scythe.
We walked home through the woods of Cadmore End, and came upon some baby coots on the muddy bank of a pond. They don't have webbed feet; they have webbed toes(!) And of course they share the pond with ducks.
Ah, Summer. In some ways, life goes on just the same here as it does at home in Vermont.
But a couple of things are different: I walked by a field of hay, cut and drying in the sun -- it could have been Marshfield or Cabot. But right across the road was a field of ripening grain.
And though this country is full of people near to madness over their frustration at Wayne, Fabio, and the whole lot of World Cup lads, a slow afternoon of village cricket goes on, just like so many summers past and to come.
